MAY 1st - The poll is up, time for votes to be cast. I've included mikeroch in the poll as well, given there were few entries.

Hi folks, and welcome to April's assignment.

This month's theme is: Flight. Matthias Messer, February's winner, specifically requested insects in flight, but I know that's a tough and narrow theme, so I expanded it a bit. Have fun!

In case you haven't joined our community but would like to showcase your work then why not Register now. It's free and we'd love to see what you can do.

PrizeThe winner will receive a free copy of our Wildlife Photography eBook, a downloadable PDF worth $9.97 which you can read on computers, laptops, tablets, iPads, phones, or anything which can open a standard PDF file! You'll find more details here.

Rules1. You can only submit one picture, and it should be no longer than 1024 pixels on it's longest side.2. The picture must be taken in April 2014 or during the last six months.3. Exercise good judgement about what is appropriate on our forum (see our Forum Rules for more information).4. Please include a sentence or two describing your picture or the process of taking it, and share some technical info such as the camera, lens, settings and processing.5. If you have any questions, comments or pictures older than six months, please post them in the Comments and Questions thread.6. Submissions will close at midnight GMT on April 30th 2014, after which you can vote for your favorite entry. Good luck!

OK, I'll come clean.... this was taken last autumn just before the terns migrated south, so it misses the 6 month deadline by a month, I've put it into keep the numbers up in poor old OA. By all means disregard it from the voting. It was a grey day, with a grey sky and the birds are mostly grey so, although it appears to be a monochrome shot, it is actually full colour. My luck being what it is, they all chose to turn their backs on me as they hovered over a school of small fish hoping to grab a meal.

There was a local (ish) balloon festival on over the Easter w/end (which I didn't know about until they appeared in front of our house!) 14 or 15 balloons in total. Great to see in the early eve sunshine.

Technically the topic is flight.. but the sparrow in my below pic i think i spent around 5 hrs and a trip of 800KMS during this weekend and unfortunately i was not able to get this tiny bird in flight even after several tries but i just got it when it was landing with some food in its beak..